Books at Bedtime by Calming Anxiety, a respectable woman by Kate Chopin.
Mrs. Baroda was a little provoked to learn that her husband expected his friend, Governail,
up to spend a week or two on the plantation.
They had entertained a good deal during this winter, much of the time had also been passed
in New Orleans in various forms of mild dissipation.
She was looking forward to a period of unbroken rest.
Now an undisturbed a tettetay with her husband when he informed her that Governail was coming
up to stay a week or two.
This was a man she had heard so much of but never seen.
He had been her husband's college friend, was now a journalist and in no sense a society
man or a man about town which were perhaps some of the reasons she had never met him.
But she had unconsciously formed an image of him in her mind.
She picked him tall, slim, cynical, with eyeglasses and his hands in his pockets and she did
not like him.
Governail was slim enough but he wasn't very tall nor very cynical.
Neither did he wear eyeglasses nor carry his hands in his pockets and she rather liked
him when he first presented himself.
But why she liked him, she could not explain satisfactorily to herself when she partly attempted
to do so.
She could discover in him none of those brilliant and promising traits which Gaston her husband
had often assured her that he possessed.
On the contrary, he sat rather mute and receptive before her chatty eagerness to make him feel
at home and in face of Gaston's frank and wordy hospitality.
This manner was as courteous towards her as the most exacting woman could require but he
made no direct appeal to her approval or even a steam.
Once settled at the plantation he seemed to like to sit upon the wide portico in the shade
of one of the big Corinthian pillars, smoking his cigar lazily and listening attentively
to Gaston's experiences as a sugar planter.
This is what I call living he would utter with deep satisfaction as the air that swept
across the sugar fields caressed him with its warm and scented felvety touch.
It pleased him also to get on familiar terms with the big dogs that came about him, rubbing
themselves socially against his legs.
He did not care to fish and displayed no eagerness to go out and kill crossbecks when Gaston proposed
they do so.
Gavanale's personality puzzled Mrs. Baroda but she liked him.
Indeed he was a lovable, inoffensive fellow.
After a few days when she could understand him no better than at first she gave over being
puzzled and remained peaked.
In this mood she left her husband and her guest for the most part alone altogether.
Then finding that Gavanale took no matter of exception to her action she imposed her society
upon him accompanying him to his idle strolls to the mill and the walks along the bachelors.
She persistently sought to penetrate the reserve in which he had unconsciously enveloped
himself.
When is he going, your friend?
She one day asked her husband, "For my part he tires me frightfully."
Not for a week yet dear, "I can't understand."
He gives you no trouble.
"No, I should like him better if he did.
If he were more like others and I had to plan somewhat for his comfort and enjoyment."
He then took his wife's pretty face between his hands and looked handily and laughingly into
her troubled eyes.
They were making a bit of toilet socially together in Mrs. Baroda's dressing room.
"You are full of surprises, Mabel," he said to her, "even I can never count upon how
you are going to act under giving conditions."
He kissed her and turned to fast in his grave act before the mirror.
"Here you are," he went on.
Taking poor Gavin Aill seriously and making a commotion over him, the last thing he would
desire or expect.
"Commotion," she hotly resented, "Nonsense.
How can you say such a thing?
Commotion indeed, but you know," he said he was clever.
So he is.
But the poor fellow is run down by overwork now.
That is why I asked him here to take a rest.
You used to say he was a man of ideas she retorted, unconciliated.
I expected him to be interesting, at least.
I am going to the city in the morning to have my sprung gowns fitted.
Let me know when Mr. Gavin Aill is gone.
I shall be at my aunt Octavius.
At night she went and sat down alone upon a bench that stood beneath a live oak tree at
the edge of the gravel wall.
She had never known her thoughts or her intentions to be so confused.
She could gather nothing from them but the feeling of a distinct necessity to quit her home
in the morning.
Mrs. Baroda heard footsteps crunching the gravel.
She could discern in the darkness only the approaching red point of a lighted cigar.
She knew it was Gavin Aill, but her husband did not smoke.
She hoped to remain unnoticed, but her white gown revealed her to him.
He threw away his cigar and seated himself upon the bench beside her, without a suspicion
that she might object to his presence.
Her husband told me to bring this to you Mrs. Baroda.
He said, handing her a filmy white scarf, with which she sometimes enveloped her head and
shoulders.
She accepted the scarf from him with a murmur of thanks and let it lie in her lap.
He made some commonplace observation upon the baneful effect of the night air at the
season.
As his gaze reached out into the darkness, he murmured half to himself.
Night of the south winds, night of a large few stars, still nodding night.
She made no reply to this apostrophe to the night which, indeed, was not addressed to her.
Gavin Aill was in no sense a dividend man, that he was not a self-conscious one.
His periods of reserve were not constitutional, but the results of moods.
Sitting there beside Mrs. Baroda, his silence melted for the time.
He talked freely and intimately in a low, hesitating drawn that was not unpleasant to hear.
He talked of the old college days when he and Gaston had been a good deal to each other.
With the days of keen and blind ambitions and large intentions.
Now there was left with him, at least, a philosophic acquaintance to the existing order, only
a desire to be permitted to exist, with now and then a little width of genuine life, such
as he was breathing now.
Her mind only vaguely gafsed what he was saying.
Her physical being was for the moment predominant.
She was not thinking of his words, only drinking in the tones of his voice.
She wanted to reach out her hand, in the darkness and touching with the sensitive tips
of her fingers upon the face or the lips.
She wanted to draw close to him and whisper against his cheek.
She did not care.
As she might have done if she had not been a respectable woman.
The stronger the impulse grew, to bring herself near him, the further, in fact, did she draw
away from him.
As soon as she could do so, without an appearance of two great arunas, she rose and left
him there alone.
Before she reached the house, Gavanale had lighted a fresh cigar and ended his apostrophe
to the night.
Mrs. Beroda was greatly tempted that night to tell her husband, who was also her friend
of this folly that had seized her, but she did not yield to the temptation.
Beside being a respectable woman, she was a very sensible one, and she knew there are some
battles in life which a human being must fight alone.
Then Gaston arose in the morning.
His wife was already departed.
She had taken an early morning train to the city.
She did not return until Gavanale was gone from under her roof.
There was some talk of having him back during the summer that followed, that is, Gaston
greatly desired it, but this desire yielded to his wife's strenuous opposition.
However, before the year he ended, she proposed wholly from herself to have Gavanale visit
them again.
The husband was surprised and delighted with a suggestion coming from her.
I am glad, share to me, to know that you have finally overcome your dislike for him, truly
he did not deserve it.
Oh, she told him, laughingly, after pressing a long tender kiss upon his lips.
I have overcome everything you will see.
This time, I shall be very nice to him.